Why Wistia Is the Best of the Video Marketing Tools

Ben manages all aspects of video content from pre-production, filming and editing to video performance analysis and even still photography. Ben can be found cycling around the city or in the office with a specialty coffee.

In 2019, video is expected to account for 90% of all internet traffic and is rapidly becoming a crucial part of most businesses’ marketing efforts. Now, making quality video content is a challenge in itself, but unfortunately that’s only half the battle – what happens once it’s released? How can you be sure that the videos you’ve worked so tirelessly over are meeting their full potential?

For many, the first port of call is Youtube which is great for reaching a wide audience. Unfortunately though it’s notoriously difficult to get users away from Youtube and onto your site. And what about analytics? While Youtube will give you top line statistics like view count and average watch time, you can’t dive into deeper information about how people are really engaging with your content.

Enter Wistia.

Wistia is a video hosting service for business, but more specifically Wistia is positioned as a global authority on Video Marketing. Their site is packed with tutorials and case studies on everything from scripting and production to strategy and analysis. As a video producer at Expert Market I’ve been using Wistia for two years now and I haven’t looked back.

Here are just a few reasons why I love it...

Simple, Custom Design

The Wistia player is simple, clean, unbranded and allows for endless customisation. You can add or remove any element of the player controls and match the colour scheme to your website, giving you complete control of the look and feel.

Although these might seem like minor adjustments, they can have a major impact on the number of people who actually watch your hard-fought masterpiece. Wistia themselves found that just changing the colour of your play button can increase play rate by 19%. Change the thumbnail to a customised image and this increase goes up to 35%!

No ads

Users won’t be interrupted by pre-roll adverts promoting other people’s products; and they won’t get a cluttered list of recommendations when the video ends. Youtube suggestions are useful for the user, but can be a nightmare for a digital marketer. Suggestions encourage the viewer to move on elsewhere and more often than not will even include content from your competitors!

SEO

One of the best recent developments in the Wistia toolbox is its SEO functionality. Whenever you embed a video using Wistia, by default your video’s metadata will automatically be put into the page header so it can be indexed without you having to lift a finger.

This metadata can even include a transcript if you have one. Don’t have the time to start writing out transcripts? Fear not – at the click of a button, Wistia will create one for you, add it to the video as a closed caption track and include it in that header info so that Google can glean a better idea of the content.

Users land on your site, not Youtube

Videos on Youtube are likely to rank well in Google search, but they will rank for youtube.com rather than your website, meaning you lose out on precious traffic.

You can do your best to send users back to your site but this is not always the easiest task. In reality we should really be treating Youtube more like a social network than a video host – it’s great for building longer-term relationships with potential customers, but will always have a vested interest in keeping viewers on-site to watch more videos, so don’t expect many conversions in the short term.

CTAs/Lead capture

Wistia videos let you include a Call-To-Action card, which is essentially a customisable full-screen link at the end of the video to encourage customers to take the next step in their journey.

You can even take this one step further with Turnstile, which is Wistia’s in-video email address collector. You can place this at any point in the video and it will ask the user for their name and email address before they can continue watching (with the option to skip of course, for the less pushy among you). The best part about Turnstile is that it integrates with a whole host of popular email providers and can be used as part of an end-to-end email campaign.

Analytics

Wistia analytics far exceed the standard “play count” metric and give you incredible insight into how your videos are performing. Two of the most impressive tools they offer are the Engagement Graph and the Heatmap. Together these help you establish which parts of the video are captivating your audience, and which parts are losing their interest.

Heatmaps will also give you details about a specific viewer’s location, device, and browser – and it’ll even tell you whether they interacted with a Turnstile or CTA! All of this is invaluable in informing your future decisions.

Ultimately Wistia helps bridge the gap between Video Production and Digital Marketing, it helps producers become better marketers and it helps marketers become better producers. Whether you’re taking your first steps into video, or churning out clips every day, Wistia really is the only choice if you want to make your content count.